So, ghosts (awesome idea) together with other awesome features (random maps, multiple copy/paste in the editor and other juicy stuff here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=846 )appeared in early February 2018 with alpha 12.

Since then we had the chance to see the score system adapting to them. I just finished to reconstruct the 20th best scores since the introduction of alpha 12 (aside from alpha 12 RCs) here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1422

One can notice the increase of the maximum 20th best score. Of course the increase happens when a player temporarily dominate most of the existing ghosts and farms them. Another phenomena, mentioned in viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1404 is that a ghost may be "farmed", lose 150 points, get disabled, the next deployment (ghost) gets kicked in, rinse and repeat. This may inject (not always, but sometimes) quite some points in the system.

While computing the 20th best score I realized the following, that will not solve the problem of score inflation, but it will slow it down over time.

A deployment is eligible as "inactive deployment" (ghost) only if that deployment broke a new personal best of the player.

Example, let's pick real data thanks to the awesome stats page.

the player is aoi and let's suppose that he has a personal best of 2225

all the following games release no active ghost, as no deployment breaks the record.

So instead of 216 ghosts, that in the worst case get farmed one after another until they lose 150 points, we can have just 12 ghosts that represents successful peak of the player (so they should be also representing the "best production" of the player).

There is a catch though. This method will likely work under the condition of inflation (that is a pretty sure event with ghosts) so sooner or later an active player will break his personal best. Only it will happen quite slowly compared to now.

Revenge wrote:I don't understand... Is there a problem with the way ghosts are now? It seems counterproductive to deploy less ghosts.

Not necessarily if the ghost is really strong. If the ghost is a test ai that will be overwritten with a better one in, say, 2-3 days, in the meanwhile it may get farmed and then the ghost (deployment) immediately before that and so on.

The idea is to have "few" (well they won't be that few, as every deployment that is a new best score is a new ghost) but solid ghosts that are not farmed that easily because they represent some of the best performances of the player.

ElvenMonk wrote:This way player may be allowed to play its own ghosts, without risk to go to infinity.

This I wouldn't do it. Not because there is a risk to go to infinity (as the suggestion would pick a "strong" ghost) rather because the idea is to play against the others, not solo.

For the additional "create a new ghost only if team setup or ai change", with a sort of checksum, is also a possibility but I guess it is not immediate (for the ai, even moving things around would change the checksum I think). It is surely already an improvement to move from 216 to 12 ghosts.

The last point: it depends if you are in range. The highest score ghost will be (almost) always in range "at the top".

OMG, I think I'm abusing ghosts inflation now to fight for top, without having better AI then players with higher ELO. I'm doing so by trying a lot of unsuccessful setups, producing number of ghosts, that feed players with lower score. Then I can harvest their ghosts and move forward. By deploying more matches, then players I'm chasing, I'm able to shorten the score distance significantly (even if I lose all matches to those few players). I believe, at least something has to be done about this.

First and foremost. If you are concerned about ghosts farming, you don't go making 4 accounts (different ones, that can be farmed at the same time).

Aside from the above this is an old phenomena actually. Before the ghosts I was interested in the "net trade" of points and while I expected that the 2000+ guys where harvesting the 1800-2000 guys it was not the case. http://pier4r.wikidot.com/pierworks:art ... lo-inights

In short the 1800-2000 guys where harvesting the 2000+ players. Only few 2000+ players harvested the others too and got higher.

If you have a dominating AI, that gains more that it loses, there is little to do about it. You go up. Sure, inflation may be faster if there are a lot of "broken ghosts" but there will be there. And once again, don't fix yourself on the absolute score, rather on the difference.

Also even if you release relatively broken ai, if you got 2550 with that broken deployment and then the good one (that is newer) is 2620, the broken deployment is available only for little time. Then the better one replaces it. The people that can see the ghost at 2550 and not the one at 2620 are not that much so there is little to "get" from your broken deployments.

Plus the fact that you "farm players that farm your broken deployment" is unlikely. There are few active players that spams a lot. Maybe 5-6 in a week in grandmaster. Those players, being lower than you (and likely 2300 or lower), have a lot of ghosts to play against. Even if they pick your broken ghost they pick it few times (rather. Since you have 4 ghosts, you are picked 4 times. That is meh. Having 4 different ghosts that can be picked in the same cycle). Few times are not enough to move a lot of points around. I am 2200 and I counted 61 different ghosts. So to pick your broken deployment multiple times I should play hundreds of games in a short time and this simply doesn't happen, aside from mumpsimus.

Also remember that ghosts do not play other ghosts. Therefore the only players that can benefit from this are those that play a lot. In those weeks those are (except elvenmonky2):mumpsimusaoi

all the others have less than 150 games in the last 7 days, namely they won't meet your ghost often enough to suck enough points from it.

In short, it is a no problem.Surely, my suggestion would cut the problem altogether as the broken deployments produce no new record and therefore won't generate any active ghost.

Last but not least. Remember that "farming those from lower score" is a dream. either you never lose, or farming repeatedly +2 and +3 is compensated by the first -18 defeat.

And of those wins, very few are intensively active players. Mostly those are ghost of idle or semi idle players that won't change their score actively. Bockwurst plays but not that much. Mcompany 2300 ghosts is not the ghost released by the active mcompany that is around 1950. gtresd is not that active. I am not that active. Streaker is idle. Tortuga is not that active. miojo is idle. Aoi is semi active. Acho is idle.

So you are farming ghosts that are mostly not influenced by your broken ghost.This unless there is a player (even only one is enough) that is plays so much that is able to redistribute points among ghosts. Mumpsimus does this sometimes but since he is going over 2400 this doesn't happen anymore.

It would be great if you would understand how the system work a bit better and you would stop obsessing about absolute scores. It is a non-problem. It is like trying to see something that is blue with red glasses.

Imagine a player that reaches a new top, say 2100 and then for long time he is unable to get better or he is testing something else. The old best ghost may lose 150 points after months and be disabled, and so no ghosts are available, lowering the variety in ghosts.

In the case the last ghost "in range" gets disabled, I would start to pick the closest deployment (in score) to that best score ghost of a never active ghost and activate it.

Or we just accept that variety could go down when ghosts are not that strong. I find the option not bad.

Ok, I'll show why ghosts really make a difference.Imagine we have only 2 players on server: User(1000) and Abuser(1000). User has only one "okAI" and never changes it. Abuser has 2 AIs: "loseAI" and "winAI". "loseAI" always loses, "winAI" always wins to "okAI".First they need to play active deployment. Important: Abuser uses its "loseAI". After game 2 ghosts are created. Abuser#1L(975) and User#1(1025)Abuser then waits while User reaches 1200, At which point Abuser#1L is 800 and there are ghosts of User all the way to 1200.Then Abuser switches to "winAI" and plays until he reaches 1500+.Then Abuser switches back to "loseAI" and falls to 1200.Now both User and Abuser are at 1200 and User is hardly going to meet "winAI", because "loseAI" ghosts are more recent.Next stop can be at 1400 at so on.

It's almost like fridge works.If Abuser will deploy AIs in opposite order (winAI first) they can both go to 800, then to 600...

I agree, that with lots of players not aware of this phenomena, system can stay stable, but I still believe I'm able to abuse it simply by switching my team setup and deploying a lot of matches.

Not really because you are considering one user and one abuser (plus you are ignoring how the elo+matchmaking works). With many other users (that try their best, always) it is more difficult to do what you did. You can try if you want (since you have 4 accounts).

Try to make a lose ai and then swap back your original ai (but being honest), you won't get much far from your previous best.

The problem for me is another one.

Without ghosts the amount of points in the system is always the same.Player A, B, C starts at 1000 points, they may end up at 800, 900 and 1300 respectively. Note that 1000*3 = 800 + 900 + 1300

With ghosts new points are added to the system, as the ghosts may start with more than 1000 points.

So player A, B, C starts at 1000, they end up at 800, 900, 1300 and their ghosts are also there. Actually doubling the points in the system. Because it is like having (800+900+1300)*2 this means that the scores get proportionally increased. Once again the differences will be right, while the absolute value is scaled.

So what I wanted to achieve with this suggestion (n1) is to activate less ghosts, possibily activating good ones, so the points released in the system are not that much in short time.

Now inflation is inevitable with a system without taxes, and of course it is emphasized if one can really dominate most of the opponents. Nonetheless even without complete domination one has +100 points per month. I think leaving active fewer (not few, rather fewer) good ghosts would keep it lower. Say, 20-30 points per month while keeping the variety.

n1: the suggestion in the meanwhile developed on discord. Now we are discussing to keep only one ghost that represent the best score of the last X games (X for me is 100, for elvenmonk is 20 but I think 20 is too little). While GFX would like to do a smaller step - that is still better than the actual situation - enabling ghosts only when a player wins.

Ghosts should be the last AI that you won with. Ideally you would only play against the current version of a player, but sometimes people deploy games with big bugs so there might be an issue with that. Sticking to the AI of the latest win.

------------------------------------------------My in-game name is MrChris

pier4r wrote:Nonetheless my point was more like "imagine that somehow for months a player cannot break his best score, although his tactics are way better than the oldest best score bot due to tactic evolution".

if "player has played more than 500 games since last active ghost" AND "player last active ghost is older than 60 days" then activate deploymentend

In this way the previous deployment is not activated, but it is avoided that the last active deployment gets too old if the player played enough in the meanwhile.

I have thought an easier way to do this, considering my first initial idea (create ghosts only out of personal best score deployments)

A ghost gets farmed, because it was a "personal best score" ghost but now the tactic is outdated. If the player is still active and his score his higher than the ghost. Therefore one can make a new deployment active if the new deployment has a score higher than all the active ghosts.

In this way one ensures that the new deployment will become a ghost that is maybe stronger than all the others compared to the active playerbase (of course this may be wrong, but it worth a try), in the case the older ghosts are getting outdated and mercilessly farmed.

GFX47 wrote:For Alpha 14, I'll try to only pick ghosts that didn't get lower than their initial score.